AfterLife

by BL Craig

  “I’m also opening up ship-wide permissions whenever we’re in system,” said the Captain. “This means that everyone has access to everything, except the core safety overrides that are hardwired into the bridge consoles, and any files you’ve marked as personal in your own drives. This means you can access systems from anywhere. I don’t recommend piloting the ship from your nexus in the shower, but who knows, it may come to that. We can also access each other. That means that yes, you can turn on someone’s implant and play the Colonial Anthem on a loop in their head and they can do the same to you.” She looked around the room making eye contact with each crew member. “I know we have a tradition of collegial pranking, but this is not the time.”

  She paused a moment. “Ok, we all know our jobs. Try to take some time to relax. Once we’re in system, we may be pulling some very long shifts.”

  Sarah caught up to William in the hallway.

  “Do you need help?” she asked.

  “No, I’m OK. The tapping trick worked.”

  “Something the Captain said set you off? Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No, just mistakes of the past coming back to haunt me. Nothing to be done.”

  “OK, well, let me know if you need anything.”

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  The little red dwarf did not even have a designation, so in a fit of collective pique they decided to call it Subterfuge Star Sigma. As expected, the system was empty. It appeared there had been some mining activity in the distant past, but nothing indicated current use. The Captain elected to skip sending the probe in, though they did stay long enough to let Sarah move Edison into the hold for modifications and then back out into its regular tube. William and the Captain volunteered to help her move things around, which consisted of pushing a lot of stuff to the edges, netting it down, and stacking more in corridors outside the pressure doors. The bay was a disaster afterward. Even with the lifts, the job was grueling. William was surprised to find himself sore afterwards. There were, it turned out, limits to the robust pain thresholds of his dead body.

  After completing the quick survey, the Captain called a brief staff meeting.

  “OK, folks, everything went as well as could be expected at Subterfuge Star Sigma. We’ve got several hops and another system between us and Rannit One. The prep is all done as best as is possible right now. In the meantime, the ship is a mess, especially the main cargo hold. We’ll spend the intervening time cleaning up. There is a chance that we will be exceeding the inertial compensators during this mission. Pulling plus gee’s is no joke. If that happens, anything not secured will drop toward the stern like it fell off of a cliff. We do not want a forty-kilo ore sample dropping the length of the cargo hold and crashing into a rover or the aft bulkhead. I know it’s been years, but most of you were on board when Jasco had to pull a three second, plus-one burn to dodge a living freighter that was way out of its lane. Without going into ancient history, half the equipment on the ship was damaged in one way or another.”

  “What about me? I fell half the length of the ship and broke both legs and an arm! I had internal injuries and cracked scull,” John interjected, half pouting, half wistful.

  “As I remember, Jasco spent three weeks taking extra good care of you,” Addy added, with a lascivious eyebrow raise.

  “During this transition, we will be securing everything on the ship to Navy standard. I’ve sent the relevant documents to everyone. Read them right after this meeting and then get to work. Check your rooms and work areas. You may think everything is fine, but if a picture frame hits you in the face at nine gees above compensation, AfterLife will be out its investment. We can’t have that. We’ve been getting pretty lax and now we have the opportunity to mend our ways. This is all hands-on deck operation. Clarke, since most of the junk in the hold falls under your section, you will be in charge of setting the priorities and work roster for that space. Everyone has stuff in the hold, and everyone, myself included, will be joining in the work party. We start work at eleven hundred tomorrow and I want everyone in attendance for the first shift so adjust your rejuvenation sessions accordingly and wrap up anything pressing in your sections. Dismissed.”

  They jumped out of system shortly afterwards.

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  William knew busy work when he saw it, but he agreed with the Captain, after the build-up and anti-climax of Subterfuge Star Sigma everyone was feeling tense. They needed a result of some sort, even if it was just cleaning their figurative rooms—though, cleaning the hold was something that legitimately needed to be done. He had been taught in the academy that “gear adrift sinks ships.” Every class for twenty some years had been shown a video of an unsecured refueling dolly crashing across a hanger on the EDS New Tokyo. On its journey of death, it had smashed into a shuttle, breaking it loose from its moorings and together they had exploded against a second shuttle. The initial accident killed twelve. The emergency decompression that extinguished the fire and saved the ship killed thirty-six more. In the aftermath of so many dead in a peacetime Navy, there had been fallout. Inquiries, safety shutdowns, court marshals, and ultimately a lot of training about locking cabinets resulted. And to make sure no one ever thought it was overkill, every person in the Navy got to listen to Chief petty officer Davíd Darwish' record a message to his four-year-old daughter, face toward the Earth, kneel, and pray to his god as the air in his sections drained to space.

  In his short time on the Tilly, William had observed all the crew at their work and with the exception of the many shelves of rocks that adorned Alex’s office walls, and Addy’s warren, they all seemed to share a tidy and organized aesthetic. You could not survive years, and in some of their cases, decades, in space without becoming at least a little bit of a professional neat freak. And to be fair to Alex, the rocks were all neatly labeled and secured. Rocks just naturally look messy when all crowded together.

  He had gathered from discussions with Alex that the business of surveying was not as neat and tidy as one might expect. There were certainly some tools and techniques that applied in every circumstance, but each system was unique. Over time the Tilly crew had acquired and built a hodgepodge of equipment. Quite of lot of it was very specialized, and some of it just might come in handy again in future survey arcs. They were hampered by the lack of a chance to offload all the samples collected on the last big survey arc they had completed. At least the samples were stowed in secure crates, some of which had environmental controls used to keep ices and potential biological building blocks from denaturing. Smaller devices were also stowed but some of the larger excavation equipment was simply too big and awkward to pack away.

  They needed to leave room for the probe teardown and rebuild. They could use that space to stage equipment, but nothing could be left in the space when they were done. The probe was big, a ship unto itself, and the restriction was hampering their efforts.

  Sarah had set William to reorganizing the modular racks that lined the large inner wall of the bay, to better accommodate the many sample crates, while she attempted to rearrange the arms on a large spider probe into a more compact shape. He scanned the bank of canisters in front of him. “Hey Sarah,” he called. “These tanks are not listed on the inventory.”

  She kicked the hovering pallet underneath the drone, cursing under her breath, and turned toward William. She brushed non-existent bangs off her forehead, a habit she had when annoyed or tired.

  “What’s the problem?” she grumped, looking at his nexus.

  “The codes on these say they’re Elixir tanks, but all of our tanks are in the med bay and the gauge here says they have some fluid in them.”

  “Hmm,” she glanced at the crate. “Oh, yeah. We picked this up from Mirada Station. I’m using them for the exhausted Elixir. We’re on a long run and need extra storage for used Elixir.”

  William had been going over the various AfterLife-specific ship protoc
ols during his orientation. “I thought used Elixir was to be vented to space, to prevent possible cross-contamination?”

  “Yeah, but I’m lazy and you never know when you’ll get in a pinch. You can add nutrients to used Elixir and reuse it if you run out of fresh. I don’t recommend it, but still, it’s better than just dying.”

  “Should I enter them into inventory?”

  “No, I’ll space it after the trip is over. No point in putting it in only to take it out and then have a bureaucrat yelling at me down the line for improper procedures. Just flag it for my department and I’ll deal with it.” She harrumphed an exaggerated sigh and stalked off back over to the spider probe.

  He set the loader to strap the crates the secured shelving and move on to the next set of items.

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  They made the capacitor modification after the next jump. Addy had been working on just this modification when he had left AfterLife research and development. He knew it would work. They had done some trials with a test ship just before he had refused to continue his work. He had assumed they would kill him or let him slowly die. They had certainly threatened him, but in the end, they had just sent him on to other work. He might have still said ‘no,’ but they never asked him to do anything someone else could not and he did not want to die that badly.

  Now, they would get this last design, assuming the Tilly needed to use the modifications. They would never miss it in the after-mission briefing. Addy knew the files for this trip would be combed over and there would be no hiding something as big as a fast jump. So be it. They had all the test data anyway. Who knows, they may have already cracked it on their own.

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  It took two more jumps to get to the next system. William sat at the helm as the Tilly dropped from slipstream. The distant dwarf star was visible. Alex pin-pointed and displayed the two brown dwarfs in orbit.

  “Initial scans are as suspected, Captain. There does not seem to be much of interest here,” Alex reported.

  “Well, this is our last chance to work out the bugs before we hit Rannit space. Let’s send Tesla out on the far side of that brown dwarf toward the other one. We can kill three birds with one stone. Test our short hop capacitor partitions, do a drone test, and fire off some pot shots from our fancy new rail gun.” She did not mention the aborted previous attempt to test the gun.

  “Mr. Butcher, plot the necessary courses and take us past the dwarf.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain. How long do you want Tesla to coast?” William asked.

  “Let’s give it a day. I don’t want to waste too much time here.”

  “Clarke, you can make the necessary adjustments to Tesla’s itinerary?”

  “Can do, Captain.”

  William plotted the two short hops. They would have to wait behind the brown dwarf for the second short hop, but not for too long.

  “Ready for the first jump, Captain.”

  “Alright everyone, let’s go.”

  “Jump in 3 . . .2 . . .1.” The jump was over almost before William registered the transition in and out of slipstream.

  “When you’re ready, Clarke,” said the Captain.

  It took Sarah a few minutes to reprogram the drone and launch.

  “Tesla is out of the tube and preparing for burn.”

  “Clarke,” asked the Captain. “Do you have any junk in the hold that would make good target practice?”

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  “Explain to me why we’re doing this?” John asked Sarah when she handed him the next piece of scrap.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “We’ve got some extra time before we can even jump. Might as well make the targets entertaining.”

  “You have a strange sense of what is funny. Torch is going hot.” Sarah turned her head away and the welding glasses darkened in response to the tiny torch. Under Sarah’s direction, he was grafting together a series of, for lack of a better word, sculptures. It had taken a while to figure what she was up to. Sitting in the newly tidy and organized bay were a series of hodge-podge crafted figures each about two meters long. They had been assembled using a variety of welds, adhesives, and in more than a few cases, industrial fiber tape. Sarah had one in a loader arm and was using an airbrush to add little touches to make the effect more noticeable.

  “Unless the Captain decides to turn on the floods, we won’t even see them before they are atomized.”

  “Don’t be a grump.” She was attaching a bit of pipe to one of the figures with adhesive.

  John shook his head and went back to welding the scaled plates on to the back of the figure he was working on. “You know when we toss them out of the airlock, they’re all going ass over tea kettle. Even with the floods, which, if you’d read the specs, you’d know aren’t used for targeting, you could end up just seeing the ass end.”

  “Well, if someone hadn’t disrupted the first test firing, I would know that. You do make a good point though,” she said. She tipped over the figure she was working on to make some adjustments.

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  When the capacitors were charged, William jumped the ship to the pick-up point.

  “Clarke,” said the Captain, “Do you have our targets ready?”

  “Just about, Captain. I’m going to suit up and send them out the EVA lock, that way we can push them off on different vectors. That should make for better spacing. I put blinkers on them so we don’t lose any.

  “Very good. Let us know when you are ready.”

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  John hung his goggles on a peg by the airlock door and set the loader to putting the sculptures into the lock. Sarah was suiting up. “You’re going to forget those are there,” she said pulling the suit torso on over her head.

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he sighed. The loaders continued filling the lock with Sarah’s menagerie. Sometimes he wondered who was more nuts, Addy or Sarah. It was clearly Addy, but still, sometimes Sarah was just plain weird. But he had to admit it to himself, if never to her, the coterie of cannon fodder was pretty amusing to look at.

  Sarah snapped on the suit helmet, then the gloves. She gave John the thumbs up and moved into the lock, sidling awkwardly past the figures to hook herself to the tether.

  “Careful not to get your tether tangled up on all those appendages. I do not want to crawl around the outside of the ship to cut you out.”

  She patted the utility knife at her side and grinned.

  The last figure was loaded, barely clearing the door frame, so crammed was the lock with her creations. “OK, I’m closing the lock.” She gave another thumbs up. He sealed the door and started cycling out the air. Once the space was in vacuum, Sarah mag-locked her shoes to the deck, hit the button, and opened the outer doors. Then she grabbed the nearest monstrosity and hoisted it out into space.

  * * *

  …

  * * *

  “That’s the last one. I gave them each a pretty good shove and scattered their trajectories,” Sarah’s voice came over the com. “Do me a favor, Captain. Make sure to throw up the visuals.”

  “Will do.” Said the Captain, “Nguyen, make sure to get us a visual on each target so we can watch them disintegrate. Butcher, move us out a couple thousand yards. Let’s make our new toy work for it.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” William said, turning doing a quick burn away from Sarah’s debris field. They were growing hard to track with IR as the metal quickly cooled. Sarah’s blinkers would help keep track of the targets. “We’re in position, Captain.”

  “Ok, let’s see what this gun can do.”

  William could see the Captain was bringing the gun online from his console.

  “Do you have my first target, Butcher?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” He tapped
the closest of the little blips on his screen and sent it to targeting. He lined up the next several so she could quickly transition and so Alex would know what to fix the optical telescopes on.

  The figure came into view. It took a moment for William to realize that it was an anthropomorphized bunny rabbit with a cigarette hanging out of its mouth. Sarah had fixed the blinker onto the end of the cigarette, so it looked lit.

  “Hah,” barked the Captain, “Ok, Bunny, time to die.” She fired up the rail gun and took aim. The first kinetic slug missed by a hair, but the second one connected with a satisfying cloudburst of dust and shrapnel.

  Alex flipped the view to the next target and a scale-backed Arcadian turtle floated into view. The AfterLife logo was painted across the scales. The phoenix appeared to be sticking its tongue out at the viewer. The Captain gleefully took the turtle out, moving on the to the next one, a squirrel giving the crew the finger. It flipped slowly end over end and William cocked his head. “Is there a butthole painted on that squirrel?”

  Yes, indeed, there was a pink and red puckered asshole on the squirrels posterior.

  William could hear Addy cackling over the com, “Clarke, you are a weird cookie.” He said between laughs.

  “Ok, Butcher, we are going to do some above compensator maneuvers. On my mark I want a comp plus .5 straight line burn, just to see how well we did securing the ship.” The Captain switched on the ship-wide comms. “All hands prepare for plus gee maneuvers in 30 seconds. Repeat, Secure, Secure, Secure.”

  To Navy trained William, it seemed like just another drill. He could tell the rhythm was coming back to the Captain. She looked excited at the prospect of a little rough and tumble, assuming everyone listened and got strapped in quickly. William watched as the time ticked down.